Kamakura was already one of my favorite places to visit in Japan. It’s such a short distance from Tokyo, about a hour by train, an offers great sites. Not only does it feature the Great Buddha Statue–a must see–but countless other beautiful temples. Kamakura’s shopping streets also have a fun atmosphere. On top of that, there are beaches! I feel in love with Kamakura even more during our last visit this month. The reason? This restaurant by the ocean: Magokoro.

Magokoro is Organic and Hemp Cafe and Bar. Though I would also classify it as a restaurant and a little storefront. While not fully vegan (perhaps its only downside), Magokoro serves a two fully vegan lunch sets as well as other vegan menu items.

If you are not comfortable speaking Japanese, no problem! They have a fully English menu. I also found that our two waitresses spoke a tiny bit of English, ensuring us that our choices were fully vegan. Awesome! Here are pictures of the English menu:

Unfortunately they were out of the Hemp Curry Plate (1180 yen), so George and I both got the Vegan Plate of the Day (1280 yen). The day we went the set was Vegan Bibimbap! It was absolutely delicious. As you can see from the pictures below, the lunch set contains 5 dishes/bowls of veggie goodness. The main dish, the Bibimbap was perfect. Topped with roasted hemp seed, mushrooms, various picked vegetables, and cut nori, the flavor was savory went perfectly with rice. I topped my dish off with spicy chili-hemp oil. Of course if you don’t like spicy food, you can skip this. The next little dish was a soft tofu topped with Magokoro’s vegan version of kimchi. A bit hard to eat with chopsticks, but very tasty! There is also a small salad topped with hemp seeds. To finish off the set was a seaweed and hemp soup and a tiny plate of two pickled vegetables. The soup had a light flavor, and the seaweed taste wasn’t overpowering.

To finish off the meal, I had to get dessert! Magokoro has a selection of vegan cakes, soy yogurt parfaits, and also hemp and soy gelato. Impressive! Since it was warm that day, I went for a chocolate hemp gelato! It did not disappoint. It wasn’t overly sweet, and the hemp seed topping added a nice texture.

All the food was very delicious and well worth the trip. We went right at noon, and we had to wait outside for about 20 minutes. It wasn’t too bad. We got there right at the right time, because while we were seated, the line grew 4x longer. Because they were so busy, the service was a bit slow. However, the wait was made more bearable by the gorgeous view.

Magokoro sits right in front of the ocean. It has a fantastic view of the beach. It was fun watching people in the water, and it just really added to the atmosphere. I also want to mention that by the entrance they sell various products made of hemp, such as clothes and bags. Very cool!

I highly recommend coming here while you are in Kamakura. Just be sure to mention that you are vegan, and the server will help guide you through the menu. You will not be disappointed!

Tokyo has a few Natural House grocery store locations. They specialize in organic and natural products. Their prices are rather expensive, but they do have a variety of vegan meats. The store also tries to label which items are vegan. There are some vegan Japanese meals in their prepared foods section that can be purchased as well. They had a tempura mock meat while I was there, but then I noticed it had egg or milk so I was out of luck. They do not have a large amount of vegan items but there are some. See below for a few vegan items I found here.

Nakano Broadway

My favorite find was right in my own backyard! In the basement level of Nakano Broadway are many grocery stores. You can find fresh fruit and vegetables and so much more. There is one shop that I found that specializes in soy. They have a variety of seasoned tofu available. I found dried soy meat in the back left corner of the store! It was a great find and reasonably priced. To cook, you boil it with spices and then add it to your favorite dish. I like making General Tso’s chicken with it or I add it into a Japanese curry.

Vegan Restaurants

Vegan restaurants like Loving Hut and T’s Tan Tan offer vegan meats and other items for sale in their restaurants.

Hey everyone! Elton and I are back with another video where we tasted some new flavors of soy milk we found here in Japan. This time we try: Vanilla Ice Cream, Earl Grey, Pudding, Black Sesame, and Ginger!

To get the best ramen in the world, you don’t have to travel far. Well… not if you live in Tokyo, Japan. Otherwise, you have to check out T’s TanTan when your in Japan. For this post, I’ll tell you about T’s TanTan in Tokyo station. Their Tokyo Station location is primarily focused on their ramen, although they have a curry and other dishes as well.

T’s TanTan can be found by entering Tokyo Station. You will need to have a ticket or buy one at the JR ticket booth. Once you enter, look for signs for the Keiyo line. Once you see Keiyo street, walk down and T’s will be on your right. Be sure to check out my video at the end of the post. I show you how to find the restaurant and show you their current menu.

T’s TanTan is all vegan and serves great ramen and curries. They also have a variety of sides, like sweet and sour fried chicken. This is a great place to find healthy ramen that doesn’t lack in flavor!

The ramen is priced from 750¥ and 900¥ (about $7.50-$9.00). If you’re really hungry, I suggest the set menu that comes with ramen and a side (price of ramen plus 300¥). Beyond ramen, the Japanese curry they serve is fantastic and I enjoy the fried soy meat as well. Between 7am and 11am they offer specially priced ramen and a Japanese breakfast soup.

On my latest visit, I ordered the Shiro TanTan set and I chose the summer special curry, Matsamon curry. The Shiro TanTan was fantastic. It has some soy meat and wasn’t too spicy. The curry was different than the Japanese curry they also serve. It’s Thai inspired and is a coconut curry. My favorite dish is the regular TanTan Ramen. It’s spicy with soy meat and tastes amazing!

T’s TanTan also has a variety of soup bases and vegan meats. They’re a little more expensive than I would pay in America, but these types of items are more difficult to find in Japan.

Check out my trip to T’s TanTan here:

Interested in helping me translate my posts and videos? Contact me, since I’d love to get this post and my videos translated into as many languages as possible!

During the last holiday in Japan, I had the opportunity to travel to Nagano Prefecture. Nagano is known for many things, but visiting the snow monkeys was top on my list. Jigokudani isn’t like a zoo. The monkeys come and go as they please. The park provides food for the monkeys and there are natural hot springs that help warm the monkeys in the winter.

Below are some of my pictures from the park, and at the bottom is a video I made explaining how to get to the park. If you’re ever in Japan, Jigokudani is definitely somewhere you should consider traveling to.

Japan has an amazing variety of soy milks. In America, it’s easy to find chocolate, vanilla, and plain soy milk. Here in Japan, there are fruit flavors coffee and tea flavors along with many others. For this blog post, I will review some of the fruit flavors you can find at grocery stores in Japan.

You can find these small soy milk boxes at convenience stores like 7/11, Family Mart, and Lawson. You can also find them at grocery stores as well. They sell for about 80¥-100¥/box (about 0.80-$1.00). There is around a cup of soy milk in each. You can find larger containers at grocery stores but you probably won’t be able to find these flavors. They tend to only sell certain flavors in larger containers (coffee, earl grey tea, fruit, and more can be found in larger containers). The larger containers sell for about 150¥ to 225¥ and has the same quantity of soy milk you can find in American containers.

My favorite of these four was definitely the melon. It tasted like cantaloupe and wasn’t extremely sweet like you might think a fruit flavored soy milk would be. My second favorite was the yuzu. It wasn’t a flavor I was very familiar with but it wasn’t very sweet and tasked great. The mango was a little sweet for me but tasted similar to a mango lassi. The strawberry was probably my least favorite. I thought I would like strawberry a lot but the flavor tasted imitation and wasn’t very sweet. I think the mango and the strawberry tasked more like juice mixed with soy milk, whereas the melon and yuzu retained their soy milk texture and taste.

I’ve also had the fruit soy milk, which was very sweet for me. I mixed it with unsweetened soy milk and it made the taste much more bearable.

Gopinatha

I was really excited to find a local place that offered vegan cuisine near where I live. I came across Gopinatha a short walk from Nakano station in Tokyo. I couldn’t find any reviews on Happy Cow or Yelp, so I thought I’d give it a try regardless… and I’m so happy I did!

If you haven’t been to Nakano yet, I highly recommend it. Among the universities of Nakano and right outside of Nakano Station is Nakano Broadway, which is a anime and manga lovers paradise. There are also many shops and one popular store is Uniqlo (which is spreading across America now).

The restaurant is small. There’s about 10 seats in the entire place. This was exactly what I was looking for! My first real Japanese restaurant experience! The owner does a good job at soliciting business from English speakers though. The menu has English, they have an English Website, and they have a map on their website in English. See below.

The directions were very easy to follow and very helpful! The outside of the building was discreet, so try to be aware while walking down the street by looking for the name of the restaurant. I captured a picture of the outside of the restaurant below.

Aside from the restaurant being small, it’s was quiet too. When I got to the restaurant, there was only one other person there. After we got there around 2pm, the restaurant filled up quickly. There are indian spices and beans among other items for sale by the sliding door. The restaurant also had bookshelves filled with interested books for those traveling alone.

The menu is very vegan friendly. I assume they only use egg or dairy in some of the items but most menu items state they can be made vegan as well. I went for the set, which was vegan. Here are some photos of the menu:

The vegan set was only 900¥ or about $9 US Dollars. Everything is made fresh to order, which made the meal even more delightful. The soup was light, but very flavorful. The dressing on the salad was tahini and some other green vegetable blended. The potatoes were my favorite, with a mustard on top. The avocado was spicy, and the tomatoes balanced out the spice. These were really good as well. Check out my photos:

I thought the meal was satisfying and affordable. After seeing a vegan tiramisu on the board for dessert, I had to try it! It was very good and recommended! They also had a carrot cake, but I’ll have to try that next time!

Like most places in Japan, this restaurant is CASH ONLY. Although some say the restaurant is an Indian restaurant, I wouldn’t really call it that. It’s more Indian inspired Japanese food. Indian food is much heavier than this. I can’t wait to go back here!

After the restaurant, we headed to the 68th annual Mitama Matsuri Festival in Tokyo! That was a great experience for my first festival in Japan. You can check out a video of it here:

Make sure you subscribe for more updates on vegan food and my travels in Japan! Until next time!

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Inari Sushi (Inarizushi) is a fried pouch of tofu stuffed with rice. The rice is sometimes seasoned and the tofu pouch sweet. I absolutely love inari! Sometimes restaurants will offer variations on the traditional inari by adding seaweed topping or stuffing it with other veggies.

So where does the name inari come from? Inari is named from the Shinto god, Inari, who seemed to have a fondness for fried tofu.

How to Make Inari

My local Asian food market sells kits that make it so easy to make inari. After purchasing the kit, the only other thing you need is rice to stuff the tofu pouches with. My kit makes 28 inari sushi pieces.

The instructions are easy. Make rice and let it cool. After it’s cool, flavor the rice with the flavoring packets and stuff the tofu pouches with the rice. Eat the inari plain or flavor with wasabi and dip in soy sauce.

Do you love inari or have suggestions for making it? Let us know in the comments!